I'd go with a hand held scan if it was safe, and not look askance at carry on being scanned.
But, what about photo film and laptops? Can they go through any scan without crumbling?
What if they go into baggage; are film and laptops scanned?
The hand held is a magnatometer, it’s good at detecting metallic objects like guns and knee replacements. Not so good a catching plastic explosives and other things that bring airplanes out of the sky and turn people into little bitty pieces.
For my purposes (discovering followers of the religion of peace who were trying to blow soldiers to smithereens), I found the L3 devices to be the best thing out there.